The night-haunts whispered and buzzed. The Selkie-haunt’s frown deepened. “We are sorry for your loss, and for our own,” he said. “But what does this have to do with the ritual?”
“I want you to make her a new body.” I picked up the mandrake and offered it to him. “I know you have the skill. This blood is hers. It will work. The ritual will be sound.”
All the night-haunts stared at me. The room seemed to grow darker and colder as they closed in, their wings buzzing wildly. My outline blurred, static and distortion, before resolving back into the shape I was determined to hold until this was done. The night-haunts were recalcitrant enough when dealing with one they viewed as an adult. Who knew how they would respond if forced to negotiate with a child?
“You would ask us to make a manikin?” asked the Selkie.
“No,” I said. Before the night-haunts could react, I continued, “I want you to make her. I want you to use fae blood to craft fae flesh. I know it can be done.” I knew no such thing, but I remembered my mother telling her programmers that she knew they were capable of things they claimed were impossible. They had always delivered. Once they had known that she believed in them, they had always delivered.
The blood was hers. If the night-haunts were capable of crafting human flesh from nothing, they could craft fae flesh from fae blood. I knew they could do it. If my mother could craft a Dryad from splinters and circuits, the night-haunts could give her back to me.
I knew they could.
“You ask too much,” said the Selkie. “It’s never been done.”
“You can do it anyway.”
“Why should we?” demanded another night-haunt, a female Barrow Wight with wings like cobwebs strung over elm leaves and hair the color of blackened oak. “Even if we could, we owe you nothing. You had no right to summon us. You offer us no reward for a favor you should never have asked.”
“I offer you the only reward that matters to you,” I said calmly. “I offer you death.”
The night-haunts drifted lower, their wings beating even faster. The Selkie looked at me suspiciously. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“My mother wasn’t the only victim,” I said. “She was merely the only victim to lose her body as well as her life. She needs a new body, if she’s to continue. The others, however, can simply be awakened—something that does not require your intervention. October is on her way. She can put them back together. She can undo what should never have been done in the first place, and restore them. They will walk in the world. They will face its dangers. In time, I am confident some of them will risk too much or reach too far, and will die properly, as they always should have done. Then, their deaths will come to you, to feed and sustain your flock. It may take years. It may take centuries. You will be fed either way.”
“It sounds like all we have to do is nothing, and we’ll get those deaths regardless,” said the Selkie.
“If you refuse to restore my mother, if you will not construct her the new body I know it is within your power to grant, I will lock the gates, and I will not permit October’s entry,” I said. “The dead will stay dead. The lost will stay lost. Your stomachs will remain unfilled. The dead who are in my keeping will never join your number.”
His eyes widened. “That would be . . . you would condemn so many people to lose the remainder of their allotted lives, all for the sake of your mother?”
“I would burn the world to ashes for the sake of my mother,” I said. I had no need to force my calm. Serenity came easily to me now. “I would rip it up by the roots and leave them to dry and wither in the sun for the sake of one more minute in her arms. A few corpses are nothing. They are deadwood at the forest’s edge, and I do not care for them.”
“Do you have no heart?” demanded the female.
“That is still under debate,” I said. “I have a hard drive. I have slivers of the wood that was my home, before I died. Before she saved me, and made me a new body, one that would last as long as I needed it to. I am not sure a heart went anywhere into my construction.”
“Surely you wouldn’t punish so many for the sake of one,” said the Selkie.
“I would,” I said. “I will.”
“What if we try, and can’t accomplish what you want?” asked the Selkie. “A fae body . . . is very different from a manikin designed to rot into nothing.”
“If you truly try, if I believe you have truly tried, I will allow October to try as well,” I said. “But I must believe you. If I do not, the doors remain locked, the dead remain dead, and we will never speak of this again.”
“We can’t make you believe us!” protested the female.
“Then I suggest you try very hard,” I said.
“We’ll need the mandrake,” said the Selkie.
I picked it up, leaned forward, and dropped it outside the circle. It didn’t have time to hit the ground. The night-haunts swooped down and whisked it away, while the Selkie hung suspended, looking at me.
“How long do we have?” he asked.
“October comes at midnight,” I said. “I will return shortly before that deadline. We shall see, then, what doors are to be opened, and which are to remain closed.”
I disappeared, leaving the flowers burning, leaving the air heavy with night-haunts, and leaving the last material traces of my mother’s life behind.
NINE
Elliot jumped when I materialized in his office, his arms flailing as he nearly sent his chair toppling over backward. I watched with interest. People do not fall as often as they once did when faced with my abrupt appearances. Familiarity breeds both contempt and a certain degree of inconvenient wariness.
“It is done,” I said. “The fire alarms in the cafeteria will no doubt notify us if we need to be concerned.”
His eyes widened. “The night-haunts came?”
“They came, and we spoke, and they took the sacrifice I offered them.” I shook my head. “Really, I do not understand why October made such a big deal about the process. They were perfectly civil with me.”
“April, you don’t have a body. Not the way the night-haunts measure that sort of thing. They can’t punish you for summoning them the way they’d punish someone else, like October, or me. All they can do is get angry.”
That wasn’t all they could do. They could also refuse to build a new body for my mother’s consciousness. She wasn’t like me, a program that could be installed in any hardware capable of supporting her needs. She understood what she was supposed to be too well. I could spend a hundred years trying to integrate her ashes with a fresh server, and all I would manage to resurrect would be a broken shadow, incapable of understanding what I had done to it, or why.
No. This was the right way. This was the way that suited the operating system of my mother, the way that seemed most likely to bring her back whole, healthy, and sane.
“Li Qin was asking for you,” said Elliot.